Pedro Almodóvar directed his first feature film in 1980, shortly after the end of Franco’s years of totalitarian rule, and when Spain underwent a process of democratization. His kicking cinema expressed the liberated spirit of the country that went free but was not directly political.
“For me, being apolitical at the time was a political statement,” he said in a recent interview with the Guardian. “It was my revenge on Franco, but I did not forget what he did.” Almodóvar did not forgive or forget, he waited – and waited. Only now, at the age of 72, about five decades after the dictator’s death and behind him 22 films that have propelled him to the top of world cinema, does the Spanish director present his most political film, the first to directly and sharply address Franco and his legacy – the war crimes and their subsequent rendering.
This is “Parallel Mothers”, which was premiered last fall in the official competition of the Venice Film Festival, and after various Corona delays, is coming up in Israel ahead of Passover. The timing of the distribution is probably not coincidental – Almodóvar is one of the favorite cinematic anchors in our provinces, and it is one of his most powerful and exciting films, which certainly has the potential to take advantage of the holiday and fill theaters here.
As its name implies, this drama is about two new mothers. The first is a photographer named Janice, whose origin of the name will be revealed in one of the beautiful scenes in the film, which also features one of the most beautiful cinematic uses in Janice Joplin’s song. The Spanish Janis tries to reveal the truth about her family’s past, while creating some big secrets of her own.
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The civil war broke out in Spain in the late 1930s, but its effects are still felt today. According to Almodóvar, following her, there are currently 140,000 people in the country whose burial place is unknown. Other sources make it clear that there were 100,000. Either way, this is a huge amount, which has almost no equivalent in the world. Only in Somalia are there more dead whose family has no grave to go to. Today’s Spain is a democracy, but with skeletons in the closet.
There are those who prefer to keep this closet closed, but many who seek to open it, and correct Franco’s wrongs. Janice turns out to be one of them, and struggles to do justice to her great-grandfather, who along with his comrades-in-arms in the Civil War was buried in a mass grave. She struggles to open this grave, identify her grandfather’s body through DNA tests, and give him a proper burial place, something his fascist rule and legacy have always prevented him from.
Janice is played by Penelope Cruz, who is her seventh collaboration with Almodóvar, and probably the most complete of them all. The actress wears different and weird hats as part of one role: mother, daughter, granddaughter, career woman, mistress, political fighter and what not. All this, and we have not yet mentioned the great twist in the plot, which you will already discover for yourself.
The various twists and turns are related to her family; In the beloved, married to another woman; And the second new mom after whom the film is named, a young waitress whom Janice met by chance in the maternity ward. It is played by Milena Smith, a stunning discovery that the Spanish director and his team found on Instagram – the app that has become one of the most important showcases in the world of casting in the past year. Throughout the film she exchanges a sequence of eye-popping outfits also relative to the style that usually characterizes the works of the fashionable Spanish filmmaker.
“Parallel Mothers” is a feast for the eyes, and as usual with Almodóvar, it is also an exciting, sensual, clever and handcrafted work. None of this is unusual relative to the director’s body of work. What is noteworthy is his way of dealing with Spanish history. Aesthetics and elegance can sometimes take the sting out of political criticism, soften and refine it excessively.
Not here – the film has Zara’s style and alongside it the rage and roughness of a bull that Matador waved at him in a red sheet. Almodóvar has been waiting a long time to get the demons of the past out of the bottle, and he is shaking that bottle vigorously. Almodóvar’s preoccupation with historical injustices is sharp, poignant, thought-provoking, and uncomfortable. Many in Spain still support Franco’s legacy, and many others simply prefer not to mess with it, to let go of the past and move on with their lives.
“Parallel Mothers” challenges these two groups. Therefore, no wonder that failure in his homeland. He did not succeed at the Spanish box office, and the local academy chose not to select him as its representative for the Oscars. The film nonetheless crept into the ceremony, but through the lead actress category, with nominations for Cruz. And it is said – there is no prophet in his city.
Almodóvar does not hesitate to resurrect the past, and does so in a literal and metaphorical sense. This ultimately leads to what emerges as one of the most powerful and memorable images in his glorious body of work, which completes the status of “parallel mothers” as one of the pinnacles of his work. It is also interesting to note how much this image corresponds with a similar scene in “Tantura”, the recent documentary that also deals with a distant and painful history that insists on emerging underground, but in this case in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The context is different, but the similarity is chilling.
More than 40 years after he started directing, and when he was no longer a promising young man but one of the elders of the tribe, Almodóvar went back to illustrate how much the past is part of our present, and probably also of the future. In doing so, he teaches us a lesson in Spanish history, reminds us how impressive and exciting his cinematic skill is, and also provides another explanation for his extraordinary popularity in the country – the fact that in the first place, Israel and Spain are so similar.
Avner Shavit is the film critic of Walla!